“Salazar has had an incredible journey from where we left him at the end of Season Three to where we will find him in Season Five,” Goldberg said at WonderCon in Anaheim, California.

“Over the course of Season Five you’re going to find out where he is now, what he’s been through, and you’re going to see how it’s changed him. And we’re going to see that the Salazar that we meet this season, while of course there’s history between the characters, he’s a changed man. Can’t say how he’s changed, but you’ll see that there’s been some real change there.”

The trailer, premiered at WonderCon, hints at a potential confrontation between a gun-toting Daniel and “frenemy” Victor Strand (Colman Domingo), who is again accused by Daniel as talking “too much.”

“He’s like a cat with nine lives, he’s like the Terminator,” Domingo said of Daniel, who was last seen being swallowed up by the Gonzalez Dam explosion triggered by Nick Clark (Frank Dillane) in Season Three.

Though Blades could give little away about his return, the star said he’s “very, very happy to be here” when thanking fans and WonderCon panel attendees.

“I’m really thankful to everyone for the support of the character, Daniel Salazar. I’m never sure what’s going to happen here. And I think no one is,” Blades said.

“In the show, all of a sudden you’re there, and then you’re not. The thing with Salazar is he’s like a cockroach, very hard to kill. He’s a survivor. So he keeps on going. I’m just very, very happy to be back with my old friends and my new friends. Thank you all, really, for keeping Salazar alive.”

“I pretty much understand Salazar. So I can go back very easily to what he is. What is a little difficult at times is the writers always know more than you,” Blades said.

“And when you do that jump, you have to sort of go with what’s written, but at the same time, what the memory of what this character is. So that even when you give up the line, you’re still holding onto something, or give it an ambiguous delivery, so that you can always retreat, go back, once you understand what is really happening. Because they know more. I mean, I have a backstory that I wrote for myself, so I use that. But with these people, trying to get anything out of them is like pulling teeth.”

weaver of the unseen

A large portion Fear the Walking Dead fans have been longing for the return of Madison Clark since the character portrayed by Kim Dickens bowed out in the Mid-Season Four finale. Having never officially seen a body, fans have hung on to the slim chance that Madison Clark survived the fire at the baseball stadium in Texas. It sounds like Dickens might be hanging on to that same shred of hope but without quite as much optimism.

“As far as I know, she’s dead!” Dickens told MovieWeb. “It was the (acting role) I’m most proud of. Helping build that show from the beginning, across three different countries, that character was something I felt I had grown my whole career to get to play. I’m so proud of it, and it ended too soon for what I wanted, but there were a lot of changes over there creatively. I can’t imagine they would want to revisit Madison, but she was a great character. I’m so proud of it.”

Fans of both The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead have long known not to assume a character is dead until they see a body. Glenn Rhee and Daniel Salazar are among many who returned after absences leaving them thought gone forever. Madison Clark's death itself was heavily implied (less than Glenn's was back during The Walking Dead's Dumpstergate scandal) and never fully realized on screen.

The show has undergone what is referred to as a soft reboot, bringing in a slew of new cast members and characters while wiping away several of the originals, Fear could benefit from bringing back one of its original stars. Though the show has garnered a bit of new interest by adding The Walking Dead's Lennie James and Austin Amelio as their respective Morgan Jones and Dwight characters, the core fans would be more likely to stick around or return if the original journey continued. The only cast members remaining from Fear the Walking Dead's first season are Alycia Debnam-Carey and Colman Domingo.

As the story goes, original showrunner Dave Erickson had planned on building toward a series finale where Madison Clark becomes a villain who ends up in a feud against her kids who are holding on to their humanity. The notion is not one which seems feasible at this point, though a return for the character with a villainous mentality could make for an interesting dynamic with Morgan as his hope for redeeming others is perpetually on display.

For now, there is no reason to believe Madison will be returning on Fear the Walking Dead.

weaver of the unseen

Why is this making me feel so happy? And what's it about with the seventies action music?

Epic. Zombie-Wagon is back and now serving as the fleet protector. They'll have irradiated zombies. Zombie lanterns. Zombie fence. Also new child actors. Strand doing negotion. Over all it looks as if they're going to do major world building in this season.

The fifth season will get underway on AMC UK on Monday June 3rd at 2am, simulcast with the US.

weaver of the unseen

Charging into its fifth season, Fear the Walking Dead is gearing up for the return of a fan-favorite character. After being sidelined for the entirety of Fear the Walking Dead's third season, Ruben Blades will be reprising his role as Daniel Salazar. The stay won't be permanent but he will have a brief presence on the AMC series, giving fans a taste of what the character has been up to since going down with the dam in the the Season Three finale a couple of years ago.

"It’s a character that we’re very excited to have rejoin the show, and I think the thing that excites us most about it is where we last left him," Fear the Walking Dead co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss told EW. "This kind of goes to why we haven’t seen him in all of Season 4 — because we last left him moments after Strand shot him in the face and left him for dead at the dam. We saw him stagger away at the end, but we don’t know what’s happened to him, where he’s been."

Salazar's story has been one of tragic loss and tremendous triumph, all rolled into one. "He’s a character who we’ve seen a very nurturing paternal side from, but he’s also a character that we’ve seen a very dark side from, who has a very traumatic past that goes all the way back to his childhood," Chambliss explained. "The thing that is most interesting to us is to explore what side of Daniel Salazar will win out in something as traumatic as what happened at the dam and what he was dealing with emotionally with the loss of his daughter."

Of course, in his final moments on the series in Season 3, he developed a possibly irreparable difference with Victor Strand. As seen in the trailer for Fear the Walking Dead's fifth season, the two will be reuniting and it probably won't be very pleasant. "The other thing that is very interesting to us is what’s going to happen when he finds some of these characters who he knew during Seasom 3," Chambliss said. "Obviously, the most explicit relationship is the one with Victor Strand. Strand has come a long way since he shot Daniel in the face. Strand has been seeking his own redemption, and I think the thing that will happen when Daniel Salazar enters the story is it’s going to make both men question who they are, whether they can overcome their past, and really test whether Strand has become a new man."

weaver of the unseen

New de facto group leader Morgan (Lennie James) will continue to be guided by two central figures from his past in Fear the Walking Dead Season 5: Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Eastman (John Carroll Lynch).

“When [Morgan] left Rick and Virginia, his focus very much was to be away from people, and not be anywhere near people, and to be on his own. Didn’t quite work out that way, and now he not only finds himself as part of a new group, but also – partly because of his history – how he survived in a role where they are looking at [him as a leader],” James told press during a set visit (via CinemaBlend).

“He has to start to make a choice about if he’s going to take that on, how he might [do that]. The way that he’s decided to take it on is by learning from the two obvious men that happen to be in his life that have taught him anything, and that’s Rick and Eastman.”

Rick and Morgan’s relationship extends back to the first season of The Walking Dead. Morgan later encountered loner Eastman in Season 6, at a time when Morgan was driven mad by the loss of only son Duane (Adrian Kali Turner).

It was Eastman who imparted onto Morgan the mostly pacifistic philosophies that have defined the character in the years since — namely “all life is precious” — a new way of life that carried over into Morgan’s debut season of Fear the Walking Dead, where Morgan tried to pass those same lessons onto a wayward Nick Clark (Frank Dillane).

Morgan departed Virginia after witnessing another major lesson handed down by Rick, who spared archfoe Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) after suffering the death of his own son, Carl (Chandler Riggs).

Though he didn’t stick around to see it, Morgan’s own teachings had an influence on Rick, who embraced a more benevolent and civil way of life in the 18 months that followed Morgan’s one-man trek west after the war against the Saviors was ended.

It’s an attitude that comes into play in Fear Season 5, where Morgan and company continue their goodwill mission to seek out and help needy strangers, guided by the cache of tapes collected by Althea (Maggie Grace).

“With the premise of Eastman’s philosophy being ‘all life is precious,’ I think that Morgan has taken that on, but in this environment, it’s that there’s a positive thing to ‘if we’re going to be alive, let’s be alive adding something positive into the world, because we don’t know how much longer we’re going to be here,’” James said.

“Everybody in this group is aware of how immediate death can be, and he wants whatever is in between today and death to at least be them trying to walk in a positive direction. To help folk.”